A new poll suggests that Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is drawing more voters from former President Donald Trump than from Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to a Noble Predictive Insights survey released last week, Harris holds a narrow lead over Trump in a hypothetical three-way race. With Stein on the ballot, Harris’ lead expands, pointing to a potential spoiler effect similar to what many Democrats blamed Stein for doing to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
For Trump, the emergence of Stein as a potential spoiler may be a critical factor in battleground states, where even a small shift in votes could determine the outcome. For Harris, Stein’s candidacy could paradoxically provide an unexpected advantage, drawing votes from Trump and narrowing his pathway to victory.
I won’t believe a single poll until this election is over. There is so much incentive for misinformation out there it is unbearable. Just get out and vote.
not even remotely relevant, but hilarious af. upvote
Literally the maga line in 2020 lmfao. Like word for word.
And then in 2022 and in 2024, Republican funded sources started releasing new data just a few weeks before the election to make it look like the Republican candidate had already won, trying to trick people into staying home on Election Day.
Times have changed, and if you’re not up to speed with the Republican playbook, today is a good day to start.
Libs will still blame leftists like blue maga wants them to.
This is a sentence with words, but the arrangement makes no sense. You sure you didn’t generate that from ChatGPT?
“I have no reading comprehension skills” isn’t the own you think it is.
? Do you disagree? Isn’t blaming leftists what blue maga is currently priming their voters for if/when they lose?
I think it’s funny that someone with “Locke” in their name would seemingly not distinguish between liberals and leftists.
You realise that you’re not using the word liberal as Locke would either right?
That’s true, they are (and I guess I am, by extension) using it in a narrower sense than is represented in Locke, who encompasses both the red and blue team, but the Lockean sense would still distinguish between liberals and modern leftism.
This is a sentence with words, but the arrangement makes no sense. You sure you didn’t generate that from ChatGPT?
Alright I’ll bite. I don’t understand this. The word liberal has two meanings: the classical and the colloquial. The latter is indistinguishable from leftist, so I assume you are using the classical form.
Classical liberals will still blame leftists, like … blue maga wants them to? Who exactly is blue maga? Jill Stein supporters?
Classical liberals also span the left-right spectrum right now, with many identifying as libertarian. I struggle to see what you are getting at regardless of who blue maga represents, but maybe there is a good point here.
“Blue MAGA” are the Democrats who think their shit doesn’t stink and love to insist that any vote that doesn’t go to Harris is a vote for Trump.
Classical Liberals are right-wing. Yes, this includes the Democrats and non-Socialist Libertarians.
Words can have different colloquial meanings. There is a really crass meaning of liberal that would identify Marx as a liberal, yes, and this is the most popular one in America, but there’s another colloquial meaning (more popular in other anglophone countries, but gaining traction in America) where liberals are basically centrists (in capitalist societies) who might pretend to be progressive but are ultimately moderates to their bones. This came from the proclivities of “Liberal” parties, along with centrists understandably claiming the name of whatever the ruling ideology is, and here it is of course liberalism.
Among leftist circles, “liberal” is sort of an unmarked term for the moderate definition and the Lockean definition both, like how “guys” can refer to both a group of males and a group of mixed gender, despite “gals” only referring specifically to a group of females (I’m using those terms because they apply to children also, not just men/women).
So the comment is saying, in translation: “Democrat aligned people will still blame socialists (etc.) like their Democrat ideological cult wants them to.” Does that make sense?
Yeah, very helpful, thank you.
No it’s not indistinguishable from the left, as issues like this show very clearly. That’s just a fiction you’re taught by liberals to fool you into thinking they’re on your side.
deleted by creator
You mean because I am asking reasonable questions to learn? I have heard the phrase blue maga but am not very familiar with what it means. Meanwhile your post history is nothing but frothing at the mouth vitriol and online angst just like all of Reddit. Why exactly are you somewhere else? I would think because you got tired of that crap just like the rest of us. So let’s try to do better here.
Jesus, bucketing everyone together and then throwing out crazy labels. Sounds like you live by the MAGA playbook.
Worldnews@lemmy.world about to lose their minds with rage.
What’s with .ml obsession with stein anyhow? Is it the links to Putin? I don’t get it.
This has to be bait. You can’t possibly think people think that way, right? .ml people disagree with NATO-sphere liberals about a lot of things to do with Russia, but that’s not the same as being mindless Russian chauvinists.
Like, do you really think whatever meetings she had with Putin or whatever it is you blue rags gossip about would be a bigger factor than her opposing the genocide in Gaza, to say nothing of having better climate policies, better immigration policies, and so on?
“But she won’t win”
Obviously, but her shaking Putin’s hand won’t change that. His apparent trick of buying a miniscule number of highly-targeted Facebook ads isn’t gonna do much for her, so we need to accept that assumption either way.
I’m voting for PSL, not Greens, btw.
I love the assumption that .ml people have to take a purity test with political leaning check boxes and receive a manual of how to think while using the instance. Not, you know, just a larger instance that’s popular that anyone on the internet can make an account on. Also love how lemmy has a more progressive stance on calling out bigotry in all it’s forms, but somehow popularly encourages instance bashing with upvotes.
Green party is the most progressive party that has access to 400+ electoral votes. Anyone that wants to participate in the farce would want to vote for them. And Dr Stein pisses off right wingers like no one else, which is a plus.
Why do Right wingers get pissed off at Stein? I do not get it. The main attack ads I have seen towards the Dr. come from the Democrats. Who try to sell her as a Spoiler candidate who is seemingly pro Putin – although no serious proof is given outside insinuations-- and also as proxy vote for Trump, because she takes away possible Dem votes.
Is it right wingers who dislike Trump?
Democrats are right wing.
Ah, fair.
Little known fact. The .ml server is run out of an old Soviet bunker in Leningrad, powered entirely by burning copies of the Victims of Communism leaflets in a converted T-34.
most don’t pay attention; so they wouldn’t notice.
Nobody hurts
likeIf the democrats lose it will be because their entire campaign is “we are not Trump, also if we lose the election it’s Russia’s fault”
Her word salads and accents are legendary. Could they have not picked someone else?
what’s better for the establishment than a candidate that functions as an empty suit?
I mean, you are right. She is a puppet. Could not risk losing all the big money Biden donators had already shelled. They want their cake too. Hence no Primary.
Watched her on a number of instances, it is all woke rhetoric and 'Vote for me, I am not Trump" messafing. Over and over.
Previous, better Candidates actually stood for something on their own. Rather than not much at all or just reminding you, constantly, of who they were not. Obama and Sanders could actually stand in a room and engage with it and with at least what sounded like their own opinions and rational ideas.
I’m struggling really hard to see which voter is on the fence between Trump and Stein. Wouldn’t it be more likely to be on the fence between Stein and Harris, or Stein and the couch?
Jill Stein is providing spite voters an option to not vote for Donald Trump.
Hillary took a lot of friendly fire in 2016 from the Bernie Bros who were not too happy.
It’s a fun thing to tell yourself, but more Sanders voters voted for Clinton in 2016 than Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2008.
I don’t know the exact math you are referring. but I do know that Obama won and Hillary lost.
Did Obama win over more right wing voters than Hillary left wing voters?
Obama was remarkably good at getting young voters out in record numbers at that time. My state went Democrat for the first (and last) time in 30-something years and when I looked at the county breakdown the newly turned blue counties were all counties with a major public university or multiple smaller universities.
I think Trump draws a lot of broad support from his ‘anti-establishment’ rhetoric so it kinda makes sense for folks to look to other anti-establishment candidates as an alternative to him. There’s a tendency to look down upon Trump voters as only right wingers, conspiracists etc and not really understand that a lot of his support is superficial and based on limited information.
In a way it’s not so much that Stein or other left candidates are spoilers for the establishment Dems but more the case that figures like Trump are spoilers for progressive alternatives to the establishment.
Not as many people hate Harris specifically as hated Hillary, but a lot of people (for good and bad reasons) hate the Dems and also Kamala to some extent.
People who don’t like Trump but are too anti Democrat to vote Harris
One could still be pro Democrat or pro democracy, and still do not like Harris. Many things can be true at the same time.
Don’t those people usually vote Libertarian?
They vote anti establishment in general, which is the green party.
I just personally hate anyone who tries to argue somebody doesn’t have a right to ruin for presidency, they might not win but that’s not the point. If you’re a democracy, any citizen who meets the criteria has he right to run for an elected position.
Democrats will still blame Stein if they lose, and even though their explicit strategy is to pick off disaffected Republicans, they’ll never blame Chase Oliver. It’s just like in 2016, when Hillary used the exact same strategy, and they blamed Stein, even though Gary Johnson took home a much higher percentage of the vote in most swing states. They don’t care about spoiler candidates; they just want to punch left, especially when they need a scapegoat for a loss.
What’s wild to me is that they actually put out attack ads targeting the Green party, which tells me they’re believing their own propaganda.
Many Democrat voters do believe the propaganda, and I imagine it largely keeps them in line so they don’t start looking elsewhere. I’ve heard multiple Democrat voting family members and friends specifically state this year that they think “The Green party only exists to siphon off Democrat votes” It’s not just bots. Media is saying it because astroturfing works, unfortunately.
Because democrats are deathly afraid of any mildly progressive party getting funding and being on the ballot nationwide, because then their entire blackmail scheme falls apart. You can’t go “you fucking better vote for us, or else” anymore.
The democratic party has been suing to take PSL and the Greens off ballots in multiple states (which also serves to cut into their budget, which is almost entirely small contributions). That’s the party trying to save democracy apparently.
This. As long as they have a base big and dumb enough to buy any and every excuse to go further right (and blame progressives for it), they’ll keep doing it.
Do you think all of those people who have been saying that third-party voters are going to destroy the US will be apologizing in the comment section here?
First past the post is a terrible design. Let’s rank choice and move on.
lol, pie in the sky right?
It is literally more likely for a socialist revolution to happen in the US than for us to use STV enough to choose the president that way.
But democrats believe in democracy!
Regardless of outcome, you’re playing with fire in our current voting system. Even if a few states did actually elect a third party, you could see no candidate reach 270 electoral votes and then it goes to the even more arcane vote done in the house of representatives (which each state gets a vote)
A very blue district in Hawaii sent a Republican (Charles Djou) to Washington in a special election with less than half the vote, because the two Democrats in the race refused to back down. If there were a ranked choice or other voting system than “plurality takes all”, he wouldn’t have won
Oh geez, really tightening up the narrative now. 3rd party voting in non-swing states is getting demonized.
Cripes. My point was our current system means your vote for the perfect candidate can put the candidate you disagree with most into office when one with much closer views to yours could have been elected instead. It has happened, and in a place where it really shouldn’t have.
That system should be changed for that reason, and until it is you should be very aware of unintended consequences of that vote.
So now that you’ve identified the problem I can only hope you’re actively building grassroots support to replace the current system instead of just posting online about how people should vote blue no matter what, right?
I see lots of problems in the world. Our voting system is flawed, income inequality is bananas, people still think Donald Trump won the election 4 years ago, our cities are very car-dependent, and plenty more. If I built a grassroots program for every issue I point out to every yahoo on the Internet, I wouldn’t have time to change my toddler’s diaper. If my posting online tells people to keep the cart behind the horse or reconsider their points of view (glad you seem to agree with me what the problem is!) I’ll call that a win on a smaller scale.
I know people who have small children and are still involved in socialist organizing.
Cool. Am I supposed to do that for every cause I believe in or just the ones you say I should?
I understand juggling the current political hellscape with a child is nightmarish but building a movement behind a better political system would be the first step in allowing people to vote for better options and resolve the myriad of issues you’ve listed - until then saying to “keep the cart behind the horse” only means we’ll continue bickering in the backseat while the obviously broken two-party state drives us all off the edge.
And I get that between work and family finding time to be politically active can be challenging but I would hope you can find an hour or two a month to join your local RCV advocacy group and help create a better political environment for yours and everybody else’s children.
.
Sure i’ll start. If this is true, I was wrong. I couldn’t believe a republican to not fall in line with the party even if the put a party clown up. Good job proving me wrong and saving America.
Without looking at any statistics or polling, I think the spoiler effect is not as prominent and is over stated for one reason.
If I’m going out of my way to not vote for the Democrats or Republicans and voting third party that would mean that I dislike my options so much that I’m giving a fuck you to the two party system.
What people can gather from this is if you said there was only two options I would just sit out and therefore it wasn’t going to affect either candidate regardless.
I’m open to be convinced otherwise but I think candidates blaming spoilers should look at the electoral college and themselves when every 4 years they are ready to blame single digit candidates for their losses.
It sounds like your interpretation of the spoiler effect centers on people voting third party due to dissatisfaction with the 2 unfortunately omnipresent parties, which would be the same as not voting. Have you considered that some people who were going to vote no matter what might vote for a third party candidate because their listed policies actually resonate with them?
yawn and thats their decision. Candidates are not entitled to a person vote, they need to earn it. If you wabt your candidate to win those votes then get them to adopt the policies that caused those voters to not vote for them.
Trump’s case: being a corrupt authorian, racist, and all around shit human. Harris: a genocidal corporate lapdog.
Trump is unfixable along with the people who vote for him. Harris might be able to stop being a genocidal ass.🤷
Idk who your arguing with, I was showing a different point of view on why someone might vote third party, not sure why you’re responding like such a dick.
Edit: sorry you seemed to have gotten two responses meant for other people. Suspect an off by one bug in lemmy reply page
I would agree with you maybe 10 years ago but I think that the empire being in such decline and leading us to the worst candidates back to back to back it’s really hard for me to believe that third parties are to blame for the spoiler effect. Taking third parties off the ballot most likely wouldn’t have the effect that people put on them because everyone has an opinion on the two candidates more than ever.
There is nothing to agree or disagree with here, I gave no opinion on spoiler effect, I explained 2 potential reasons why someone might vote third party.
Dem mental gymnastics are going into overdrive rn
Jill Stein releases a statement: “To be clear, I only want Kamala votes please! Only former Kamala voters!”
You heard’em, start campaigning for Stein if you want Kamala to win.
A vote for Stein is a vote for Kamala!
Insanity. Anyone willing to switch to Stein should be at least as willing to switch to Harris. Someone get this goddamned grifter out of politics
democracy enjoyers when people vote for candidates that better represent their positions: 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
Donald Trump is a threat to democracy 😭😭😭 now shut up and vote for the candidate, peasant. You’ll have a primary when you earn it.
I love how the ml community plays off how big a threat Trump is. History repeating itself.
Everyone knows that he’s a fascist. We also know Kamala and her cabinet is gonna be hardly better, so if you’re gonna vote, don’t waste it on a genocide enabler.
We already know all the talking points of “pushing her left”, we know y’all ain’t gonna do shit, because you didn’t do it with Biden and you certainly wouldn’t have done it with Obama, it’s always people who voted third party out there organizing while y’all wait for the next election to come around for you to pretend you’re doing something.
I’m sorry that I live in reality and like to focus on actual outcomes instead the little butterflies I get when I make empty idealistic speeches.
Getting Trump elected better represents your position? Then by all means - that’s the only thing your vote can actually accomplish in her bucket.
🥱
Voting third party under the US system doesn’t improve society so, like you, the meme kind of misses the point.
Voting
third party under the US systemin the imperial core* doesn’t improve societyFTFY. Organizing and direct action gets concessions
So don’t vote is your message. As a PSL voter I agree, but i want you to internalize what you’re saying.
He never once said that, you people are so dogmatic.
Neither Dems nor Republicans support rcv at the national level, so…
You’d be right if first past the post didn’t exist, unfortunately the game is rigged
Democracy enjoyers understand that this version of democracy doesn’t care about third parties 🤷♂️ vote for the lesser evil and campaign locally for vote reform
doesn’t sound like very much of a democracy, does it?
It’s reality. Campaign for vote reform.
And Democrats will do that, right? They’ll remove corporate money and superpacs and the electrical college? Abolish first past the post?
No, or at least not at the federal level, that’s why I saying to campaign locally for vote reform.
Vote reform is needed because first past the post is a bad system. Third party candidates are pointless because of the first past the post system. You can acknowledge that the system is broken and work towards fixing it while still making a choice that has an actual effect.
You know that Trump is a worse option, and you know that voting for a leftist third party will make it easier for him to be elected. These are simple facts. You can either choose to use the information or ignore it and prioritize your feelings. Maybe you don’t have queer friends, or female friends, or minority friends and none of that matters to you 🤷♂️
I did vote Harris but not because she’ll do reform, because she is the only “not trump” I can vote for in a blue state.
I’m not voting for the “lesser evil” when the “lesser evil” commits a genocide. There is no dilemma when we are counting genocides. When do you start realising that both are serving the 1% interests? When does this end - if the dems commit 3 genocides and the republicans 4? If the dems commit 10 and the republicans 11? The red line is long crossed.
Don’t tell us what to do lmfao.
Congrats, your actions likely lead to even more Palestinian deaths. Yay, you “took a stand.” The extra dead will be so thankful.
It’s so funny that you think the democrats aren’t the genocidal maniacs that have unconditionally supported and armed Israel. It doesn’t get much worse than this, Israel has got literally everything it has asked for lmao. The problem is you thinking they are in any way holding back, but go off. As Joe said, no president has supported Israel as much as I did.
Tell us how not so evil the democrats, which are funded by the military industrial complex more than the republicans, are. Tell us how they work for our interests, not the oligarchs, please.
I’ve said this a million times, if the two candidates were Hitler and Hitler again, but he funded a little bit more the healthcare system who would you vote for? None is the answer. When the dilemma consists of ideologies and political/social trajectories that are 100% opposite to your ideal ones, the lesser evil doesn’t exist.
Don’t blame the dead on the people who have done more than the 99% for the cause, I can’t take you seriously that way. You can blame the oligarchs and the fascists/liberals who don’t care.
the democrats, which are funded by the military industrial complex more than the republicans
[citation needed]
Tell us how they work for our interests, not the oligarchs, please.
Yes, they’re all oligarchs. Stein included - her net worth is nearly 10x Harris’s and Walz’s combined, you fucking dolt. You’re not moving the needle, you’re just helping a worse candidate gain office.
I’ve said this a million times, if the two candidates were Hitler and Hitler again, but he funded a little bit more the healthcare system who would you vote for? None is the answer.
Yes, I would fucking vote for Healthcare Hitler. I don’t care that you feel bad while doing it, i care about what the potential outcomes are. You get hitler either way, why would you not make a choice that leads to a better future?
You’re so concerned with your own feelings that you’re actively trying to make everyone’s lives worse just so you don’t feel bad. The only positive that your vanity vote provides anyone is that your fragile feelings are protected.
sorry, I don’t vote for hitlers :/ if Harris wanted me to vote for her this election, she could’ve run on not being Hitler (as 101,000 uncommitted voters in Michigan, a very important swing state, asked her to), but she didn’t, so I won’t. I really hope her strategy of courting all 6 moderate republicans in the country at the expense of anyone to the left of the party works out, but if 2016 is anything to go off of, it won’t.
Here’s your citation:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=D
Democrat Senators are funded more by the military than the republican ones, and that’s only the above the table money. And before you say I’m cherry picking, I know I am. I’m not trying to argue that republicans are better, they are not. I’m just giving perspective on how little they differ.
I don’t care if Stein is an oligarch, she very well could be, but I never advocated for her. In only advocate for not voting the two systemic, imperial, neoliberal parties. Also I never talked about Harris or Trump’s personal wealth. Having a couple millions in the bank doesn’t make you an oligarch. Oligarchs are the actually super rich people that these parties necessarily serve, like I’ve explained. It has to do with their actions and their party’s ties and actions. That’s not a serious argument. But I don’t know about Stein’s history and what she has done. If you think she checks the boxes above, don’t vote for her either. I’m not deifying anyone.
As for the last part, which is the actually important one, no matter how much you try to make it about feelings and repeat it, you unfortunately will never make anyone believe this. If I thought it would help Palestinians to vote for Harris, my feelings would tell me to vote for her, it’s as simple as that. But you are so deeply fried in the oligarchy propaganda that you can’t understand what I already pointed out. That you blatantly assume that the democrats made any non-negligible concession on that matter that the republicans wouldn’t and so we should vote for them. This is 100% wrong.
I am not complicit with this oligarchy system we are living in, not only in regards to the genocide. So I’m not voting for them, I am not giving my approval. They can’t produce any meaningful change, they are both far right neoliberal parties.
And if you want to vote for Hitler, I don’t really care, I am assuming you say this now because it strengthens your argument, but the difference would be so negligible (as is now) that the fact that there is one more vote on them signifying approval has to be more detrimental than the bad Hitler coming to power. There are limits to the harm the lesser evil is allowed to cause, and you willing to vote for Hitler doesn’t change that.
Democracy when theres only one choice is called something else.
You should try to enact change locally, then. You throwing your vote away doesn’t change what our system is, it just elects the candidate that will kill more people.
Hey would you look at that, greens and PSL also run local candidates and greens have more than 150 in office.
Anyway I’m not voting for genocide little buddy. It’s weird you’re trying to convince me to.
Anyway I’m not voting for genocide little buddy. It’s weird you’re trying to convince me to.
Keep telling yourself that, friend. A vote for Stein is a vote for a worse genocide. I’m sorry you prioritize your feelings over their lives.
There is no worse genocide, that’s not a thing, and I’ve already voted for Claudia. Stein is a fine choice for those that can’t vote for the best candidate though. No one, not one human with a brain and sense of humanity would vote for genocide, so two candidates can be struck off as choices.
A third party getting 5% of the nation wide vote qualifies them for federal election funding next election.
Voting 3rd party is enacting change
That’s one opinion, and it certainly has its place, but it also leads to weak candidates like Hillary Clinton. Not surprisingly, if you push weak candidates and argue that we should vote for them because they’re not as bad as the person on the other side, a lot of voters will stay home.
After all, if you’re going to hell, does it matter if it’s slightly slower or slightly faster? Yeah, it probably does, but that story takes a long time to tell, and many people have short attention spans.
After all, if you’re going to hell, does it matter if it’s slightly slower or slightly faster
So you don’t actually care about the people being genocided, just how it affects you? Voting Stein will lead to more Palestinian deaths, and you are explicitly saying that you’re okay with that. Cool. You sound great.
Wait, what? You know that Harris and Biden are currently doing the genocide, right?
My best friend best represents my position but voting for him does nothing. Rigid morals that have no impact on improving anything are pointless.
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So your response is to insult me and tell me to fix everything? I can see I’m dealing with a true scholar here.
I’m simply pointing out that you can have an impact on the outcome or not. You don’t have to like that reality, I don’t, the it doesn’t make it anyb less true.
I simply pointed out the logical flaws in your thought process. If that insults you 🤷. Lifes rough, find a better use of your time solving the problems with the process than bitching at people who think your ideology is shit and then being surprised when they tell you so.
Telling me what I do and don’t realize is insulting. It would be like me saying you don’t realize that you’re possibly hurting millions of people so you can keep a moral high ground.
I don’t care about ideology and dogmatic shit like that. I care about facts and logic. And the hard fact is Harris or Trump will be president. That’s fact. You can rationalize all you want but you have a choice between the two, and a chance to impact the outcome but are choosing not to. This is the trolly problem where you sit back and watch the randomized switch because you’re against killing people. You could choose the rail that would cause less suffering and are choosing a third option that has no impact. I don’t get why this concept is so hard to understand.
Poor feefees. You clearly don’t care about facts and logic.
Because facts and logic would lead you to the realization that only Harris can fix her appeal to voters, and that 3rd party voters dont effect the election outcome for president. If someone is voting 3rd party they have good reasons for it. And no amount of bitching at them will change those reasons.
You not agreeing with those reasons is a you problem not a them problem. If harris is the more popular candidate she’ll win thats how it works. If shes not she wont. these are decisions only harris can make about ber campaign.
Fun fact: many 3rd party voters are also Republicans who wouldn’t have voted for harris anyways. Are they also helping trump?
My wife is one. She voted for Trump in '16. She won’t vote for him again there’s no way she’ll vote for Kamala.
People are allowed to stand for election without engaging in your idiotic 2 party system
You’re allowed to do whatever you want, I just want you to understand that you’re choosing to literally do nothing 🤷♂️ you’re not making a stand, you’re not sending a message, and you’re not enacting change. You’re voting for Donald Trump while making yourself feel like you’re fighting an ideological battle.
I’m not even fucking American 😂. I just believe that people have the right to stand and vote for a legitimate candidate.
There is no legitimate third-party candidate in a first past the post system.
Of course they are
Not being likely to win doesn’t make them illegitimate.
The UK is a FPTP system with 7.5 significant parties
The UK is a FPTP system with 7.5 significant parties
… I’m not sure how to break this to you, but the UK is a monarchy and has literally never elected their leader.
FPTP isn’t nearly as problematic in a system with distributed representation like Parliament, the Senate, or the House. It is massively problematic when electing a singular leader.
It is massively problematic when electing a singular leader.
No, it’s not. That’s how all of the elections you just listed work. That’s how first past the post works.
Seek help. And an education.
Whenever I’m in an ml community I love seeing what’s down voted and why. Always a trip…
Always make both parties worried: threaten to vote for a third party to keep the main party on its toes. But vote for the main party on the actual day. This isn’t a time for idealism.
Sure, if you’re willing to take your actions to the streets and have a large following behind you, then by all means strike while the fire is hot.
But if you’re not organised other than a vague internet presence, now is really not the time to fuck about.
Oh, you mean materially supporting protests, showing up to several daily for months, and marching in the street as often as possible? Glad to hear you support Jill Stein.
MLK commanded 44% popularity, Jill Stein is nowhere in that league.
To compare the marches and the impact of the two is the definition of insanity, and to ask others to lend support for her or any 3rd party now at such a critical time is literal madness.
Who in the fuck brought up MLK?
(a few comments up)
I’ve also seen people vote third party for just as long and not a damn thing has changed either. In fact I used to be one of them.
Has it not? Political parties have copied popular policies from third parties in their subsequent elections many times.
But only once they see how many votes they lose on it they will start considering those policies.
A threat that you refuse to make good on is the same as doing nothing. I have no interest in telling someone who to vote for, but your proposed strategy is ridiculous.
Right? If we have nukes, we should just use them! The threat itself does nothing…
(…think before you speak)
Appropriately apocalyptic for the liberal view on these elections, but the problem, also appropriate for the liberal view on these elections, is that you are taking the Other to be a complete dipshit.
If you’re in a situation that isn’t the literal end of the world, bluffing has a serious danger associated with it because it informs all circumstances subsequent to the bluff if it gets called. From that point on, people know that your threats are not to be taken seriously, and you have robbed yourself of whatever power you had. You become a “boy who cried wolf” with respect to the actions you will take.
Furthermore, this time in all situations, it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to stake such a widespread plan of action on everyone at all times maintaining a lie. How do you agitate for such a thing? You can’t speak of it in the open. How do you vet candidates? Someone might be an asset (and liberals usually believe spaces both online and offline are crawling with assets for other states) or even just someone who thinks you plan is bullshit and will decide to talk about it afterwards. Basically, your plan works in the same realm of imagination where wars would stop if all of the soldiers on both sides just laid down their arms. That is to say, if you could just cast a spell and make people act that way, sure, but that’s not how politics works.
Lastly, it’s important to remember we are talking about threats, so “If we have nukes, we should just use them!” is a complete non sequitur. That’s not a threat, that’s just an attack. Incidentally, while there is a good argument to be made that if you get nuked, you should just take the L if you think your barrage might tip the scales into the world ending, such an idea definitionally does not work as the dominant ideology because at that point MAD does not protect your country anymore and there’s really no point in you having nukes when you’re just surrendering to death anyway. If you’re an individual operator of a nuclear silo or something and you refuse to participate in ending the world, good for you, but again that’s something that you can’t organize with because it’s a conspiracy of a similar style to what I outlined before, so you aren’t going to succeed in helping very much unless you’re on the vanguard and it might be a false positive that an enemy nuke was launched at all (this happened at least once with the USSR, during the Cuban Missile Crisis). In that extremely specific situation where mass action is impossible and only a tiny fraction of a fraction of the population ever gets close to being in the conditions where such an incident has even a slim possibility of occuring: Yes, there it works well.
I’m interested in your timeline for idealism. Got time to share it with us?
2 minutes before a two-horse election apparently is a fantastic time for it
tips hat, backs out of the room
Funny if true.
She can still go fuck herself.
Why? What’s the excuse this time? You guys are too comfortable supporting genocide perpetrators
‘What’s wrong with this foreign stooge spoiler candidate? I don’t know how elections or trolley problems work!’
Blocked.
So dnc candidates are not puppets, got it. Also the comment was made taking the survey findings for granted, so no spoiler candidates for you people, but you didn’t see that either.
I saw everything I needed when you moved right past the genocide part though, I don’t expect someone like you to understand regardless.
Keep downvoting, that’ll change how the Electoral College means fascists win by default, thanks in part to nobodies like this. Her chances of winning even a single state are zero point zero percent - but tell me you’re gonna do it anyway, because that triggers the libs! And lets a fascist ruin America and Gaza!
Why do people feel the need to publicly announce blocks? Who cares if you read my comments or see my posts? Not me, that’s for sure.
Block me to, then reply to this comment you blocked me as is tradition in this blocking ritual. GG no RE
But whining and posturing about it makes perfect sense.
MRW when @univeralmonk was right
